Coronavirus :dontpanic:

My brother came round today to drop off a birthday card. I pushed a plastic chair 2m out into the front garden, and he sat in it and we had a distanced conversation involving family talk and suchlike matters.

I was driving again during the 8pm clapping. Due to the warm weather I'd got the windows partly down this time and as well as the clapping I could hear bells and general clanging of pans and things; the streets were dotted with people standing outside their homes, some waving as I went past.

This time I felt like I was in a car race and the trackside spectators were cheering me on as I zoomed by - at about 25mph.

And once again, post-clap there were occasional groups of neighbours standing chatting over front garden walls, one lot still there at 8:25 as I neared my destination!

No clapping last night, nothing except one solitary firework.

Plenty round my way.

But, that's it now.

Silence round here.

The parents of one of my sons friend are taking a group of four/five boys to their place in Provence for August - the whole month. He's invited, and I don't know what to do. The flight isn't commercial, either going or returning, so there's that. I think I'll call them back tonight and say he can go, unless a second wave hits here or France before the 1st August.

Fangirl Three wrote:My brother came round today to drop off a birthday card. I pushed a plastic chair 2m out into the front garden, and he sat in it and we had a distanced conversation involving family talk and suchlike matters.

It's very hard. In our family it's two to three kisses and a hug on meeting, other hugs and touches and strokes of hands throughout, and a tight embrace on leaving while showering each other in kisses. In particular, children and elderly relatives are not released until every part of their face and hair has been kissed in a final flurry.

My brother and I restricted ourselves to one air kiss to greet, and a masked one armed hug upon leaving.

Gosh, looking through Wikipedia's recent deaths, in more recent days most of the "famous" COVID-related deaths are now in South Asia, South America and Russia. It really does seem to have shifted from where it mainly was a few weeks ago - ie. Europe and North America; before that East Asia.

Just to clarify that this isn't exactly a scientific take on the situation.

Overly friendly woman at the supermarket queue earlier. Three attempts at trying to converse with me before a man joined the back and showed willing, so I heard all her spiel anyway. Ridiculous fuss about nothing, holiday refunded, not as nice out today, hope the masks 'her in front' has on don't become mandatory, etc.

An unexpected upside of the situation, I've developed what, from observation of others, seems to be quite a normal stable relationship with my mother. I ring/she rings, and after a rundown of events and feelings, we recommend things that we've enjoyed on Netflix/Amazon/catch up services, I remind her not to go out without her mask, and ask if she needs anything she's been unable to get.

There's Finlay on the news, a young carer who sets his alarm to get all the laundry done for his mother. We don't have any of that going on here, despite all my aches and pains and sedative prescriptions - at one point we were even losing cutlery on a daily basis because he'd taken his grandmothers advice about just binning them and picking up clean ones in restaurants and canteens as and when required. I was down to a solitary jealously guarded teaspoon to measure out my one unheaped Demerara for my morning cup of tea.

Since allowing him out alone, earlier today I found a £41 Sainsburys receipt with my debit card number on it, itemizing a list of absolute trash I don't recall being shared with me. Ten six-pack Golden Wonder S&V crisps. Not one of these sixty bags was offered to me.

It's all a bit of a mess really. Traffic seems back to normal, lots of people out and about, 14 day quarantine for landings. I rang my doctor to ask about a particular medication missed from my last prescription and they still start with the recorded welcome message saying 'if you think you've got coronavirus, get stuffed, stay indoors for 7 days'.

UK daily COVID-related deaths down to double figures, lowest since before lockdown (although expect it to jump tomorrow as per usual post-weekend), and London finally officially reports no deaths within 24 hours; Scotland and Northern Ireland report no deaths over two consecutive days.

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-london-reports-no-deaths-of-people-with-covid-19-in-24-hours-12002905

It's as if everyone got bored and gave up. It'll be a miracle if the next wave doesn't go higher than the first. The tens of thousands of avoidable deaths so far have been absolutely sickening. A damning indictment of our disgusting society - in many ways I think we are worse than the USA, they at least have a significant section of the population wise enough to face the truth that nobody will help them, and that many will actively hinder them if there's a dollar to be doubled. We seem to sail on as everything gets swept under the carpet. Today I read, as I expected, that only now June temperatures have sped up the process of decomposition have the unnoticed dead begun to be found. One PC dealt with 21 of them in a single shift.

How anybody can sleep properly having seen the scale of the damage done is beyond me. This of course is just the latest and most obvious example. Along with many others, I was appalled by the lack of attention and action that our being investigated by the UN for human rights abuses against our own citizens received. The last three months is just another chapter of the same story.

Let's not forget we are currently second worst in the world for total deaths, second worst for per head of population deaths, and have come an incredible first in the economic damage now being measured. All in just a few weeks. Its upsettingly clear that collectively we can no longer be considered fit to run our own affairs. Terry F*ckwit and co cheering on their own destruction as ever.

Who the hell would want the Brits rampaging across their resorts this summer? The usual chaos as our ignorant hordes happily slide through their own vomit and bodily fluids, batter each other senseless, and divert local resources to be compounded by the very real risks we now arrogantly pose to the elderly, vulnerable, and entirely innocent residents of our neighbouring countries.

I have to admit that three months ago I actually predicted a far worse outcome. The way things were going I thought hundreds of thousands would die in this country alone. I've personally known one person die of/with the virus - an elderly relative of my best friend who was in her 90s and was already very ill - and have known a number of younger people get it but with no severe outcome, including two of my cousins.

Due to my original expectations perhaps I'm a bit more glass half full than some; I also think there could be a number of reasons for our higher death count (aside from government failings) - we are a relatively small country with a large, dense (especially London) and older population, and very much an international country with people coming and going from all over the place. I do think airports and such should have closed earlier, especially having read today that over a thousand separate cases of Covid came here from Europe alone.

I did notice the other day that percentage-wise Belgium has had I think the highest percentage of deaths in Europe of its population. Sweden are now apologising for not locking down (at all?) - it seems no one (apart from maybe Germany at this point) got it completely right. It has been an unprecedented world pandemic after all.

As for a possible second wave, that's a discussion for another time - my mind can't process it right now but I certainly hope any lessons have been learnt!